Rickroll’d no more: Internet meme takedown! [Updated]

[Note: "Never Gonna Give You Up" is back on YouTube. See update below.]

If you were using the Web in 2008, chances are you got rickroll’d. For the six of you who weren’t on the Intarwebz back then, Rickrolling involves directing someone to a link with the promise of something special. Instead, the hapless victim sees a YouTube video of the 1987 Rick Astley hit, "Never Gonna Give You Up".

But now, Rick apparently has given you up. The original video used for rickrolling since it was invented on 4chan in 2007 has been removed from YouTube for a terms of use violation.

The takedown, spotted by Neowin, is somewhat surprising. Yes, this was copyrighted material posted to the Web, but it had been viewed more than 30 million times. The rickrolling phenomenon had made the song popular again, turning a one-hit wonder into a – cough – timeless classic. Its presence on YouTube was definitely of benefit to the copyright holders.

In fact, rickrolling was such a powerful meme that it spilled off the Internet and into real life. In April 2008, a flash mob rickrolled the Liverpool Street Station in London. Also that month, all of Shea Stadium was rickrolled . . . on opening day.

And the best rickroll of all occurred during the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, when Astley himself emerged suddenly on a float to sing "Never Gonna Give You Up".

With 20 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube, we count on our community members to know our Community Guidelines and to flag content they believe violates them. We review all flagged content quickly, and if we find that a video does violate the guidelines, we remove it, on average in under an hour. We also have a team that is dedicated to identifying and removing spam from YouTube. Occasionally, an account flagged by users or identified by our spam team is mistakenly taken down. When this is brought to our attention, we move quickly to take appropriate action, including restoring videos that had been mistakenly removed and channels that have been mistakenly suspended.

Apparently Astley doesn’t yet know about the fuss, according to an e-mail Neowin received from his manager:

Neowin also spoke to Rick Astley’s manager Tony Henderson earlier today who said he was disappointed the video had been removed briefly. "I have not told Rick yet as he is driving to the French Alps to practice his rolling (sorry i meant skiing) I don’t think anyone should or indeed can, stop people having fun on the net, there are more urgent concerns on the internet that need sorting," he said in an email to Neowin.

This is the perversity of IP and copyright laws. Books have gone out of print, innovation has been stifled, and now we are all poorer by the loss of being able to prank your friends with a truly awful song.